For 181 years, the Evening Standard has been hitting the streets of London - seeing off 13 rival newspapers during that period. But its 21st-century free rival, the London Paper, has arguably caused it the deepest wounds.

The paper was launched in 1827 by businessman Charles Baldwin and printed in Blackfriars. George IV was seven years into his reign and the Standard made it its mission to take a stick to the prime minister of the day, George Canning.

Then it was known as the Standard, and it competed with the Times, which labelled the upstart "a stupid and priggish print". Circulation of both organs rose.

It was not until 3.15pm on 11 June 1859 that an evening edition of the paper hit the streets of London for the first time, price one penny. It became the Evening Standard in the following year.

The paper had a marble bust of its first editor, Dr Stanley Lees Giffard, in its premises and when Lees Giffard left after 30 years circulation plunged and the paper was sold to James Johnstone. He reintroduced the morning edition and cut the price back to one penny – where it stayed until 1951.

The paper had a succession of owners and editors and as the 19th century became the 20th, found it more and more difficult to compete against the rising Daily Mail, which was selling close to 1m copies a day.

The papers were bought by Sir Edward Hulton, the Manchester millionaire owner of five other newspapers. Hulton made the Standard more populist and introducted a new three-column feature "written daily by gentlemen for gentlemen". The Londoner's Diary still appears today, though its mission statement is somewhat different.

By 1923 Hulton was ill and he decided to sell his entire newspaper chain. Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express, was circling and Hulton's family refused to allow Beaverbrook through the front door of Hulton's ground-floor flat. So Beaverbrook strolled into Hulton's bedroom through the french windows and bought the newspapers for £6m. Within days the Canadian born press baron sold the rest of the chain to Lord Rothermere, keeping the Evening Standard.

Beaverbrook, who already owned the Daily Express, was a prominent and powerful supporter of the Conservatives, even serving in Winston Churchill's wartime cabinet.

He lavished attention and money on the paper's star cartoonist, the ascerbic and independent David Low, who got the paper banned in Italy in 1936 after Low's waspish depiction of Mussolini attracted the dictator's wrath.

Modern critics of the paper who objected to its support of Conservative Boris Johnson's successful bid to become London mayor last year will find echoes in the Standard's anti-Labour stance during the 1945 general election. It printed photos of Labour's National Executive Committee with a caption warning readers that "These People Want To Be Dictators". The Tories were soundly beaten.

Post-war, the Standard competed fiercely with the working-class Star and the big-selling Evening News.

While Beaverbrook was alive the paper's survival was guaranteed – but when he died in 1964 aged 85 his son, Sir Max Aitken, succeeded him but encountered stormy waters.

By 1980 the Star had gone and so had the Beaverbrook family. The Beaverbrooks' successors at Express Newspapers still owned the Standard but merged the paper with Associated Newspapers' Evening News in a 50/50 joint venture. In 1985, Associated took total control of the venture, renaming the paper the London Standard. It was renamed the London Evening Standard in 1986 and the following year it became the Evening Standard.

The paper came under threat in 1987 when Robert Maxwell, the proprietor of the Daily Mirror, waded into the London newspaper market and launched the London Daily News directly against the Standard.

Associated was furious. The London Daily News aimed for a circulation of between 500,000 and 600,000. Models were employed to take the Evening Standard from the hands of commuters, and replace it with the London Daily News. Such was the ferocity of the war that the Evening Standard offered readers a free house in a prize draw and Associated relaunched the Evening News after it had been closed for seven years in a spoiler operation. Tales of unfair sales tactics abounded, writs and counter-writs flew, but five months later Maxwell threw in the towel and closed the London Daily News, citing poor distribution and printing difficulties. It was said to be losing £1m a week.

Sales of the Standard by this time were about 500,000 and the free house promotion gained it readers. Associated closed the revamped Evening News nine months after relaunching it.

The News Corporation chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, who shied away from launching a competitor against the Standard in the 1980s, launched a free afternoon newspaper, the London Paper in 2006. Once again a furious Associated defended its patch, managing to hit the street with its own freesheet, London Lite, days before the London Paper launched. But it has cannibalised sales of the Standard in the process.

The Standard, which has proudly styled itself the "voice of London" and has previously seen off all competitors, has not been able to shake the freesheets, despite Daily Mail & General Trust chairman Lord Rothermere meeting his News Corporation rival James Murdoch in a failed attempt to form a truce in the London freesheet war.

And today, the paper whose editors have included such famous Fleet Street names as Charles Wintour, Simon Jenkins and Paul Dacre, while boasting writers including Randolph Churchill, Harold Nicholson and John Betjeman, seems once again to be saved from history's dustbin by the pride of a new, unconventional proprietor.

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